


Run with Knives

by mimeo



Series: Love with Teeth [3]
Category: Preacher (Comics), Preacher (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Smut, with angst on the side, yes i put a wwdits reference in this so sue me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7620925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimeo/pseuds/mimeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has stared into the flaming sun of her soul for so long that he is blind to anyone else's. She's built so many walls around her heart, it would be impossible for anyone to ever get through. Yet every time she adds a new layer of impenetrable brick and turns around, there's Cassidy, already stuck with her on the interior and grinning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run with Knives

**Author's Note:**

> Delicious codependency and violence set decades after Cassidy bites Tulip. A note from the first installment: "I guess this thing is an AU that begins in the comic verse circa issue #40, but with strong influences from the personality and appearances of the TV characters."

Tulip never had much to her name, never been a materialistic girl. She'd been a practical one, wearing clothes she could rough up and run in. Now she didn't have to do so much running. Now she could snap a man's neck in one hand without so much as creasing a Valentino velvet dress. She'd had the taste all her life, just not the budget. It was always a dream to stroll into the upscale department stores and slam down cash in front of everyone who suspected her of shoplifting. 

 All she'd ever been was a career criminal. And it was high time for a promotion.

They learned what to take by force, and what to pull a long con on. How to play nice with corrupt cops. How to assimilate a city's warring gangs into one horde under her thumb. She's built a fine little network betwixt Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philly. A luxe home base apartment in each one. She's had enough of arid flatlands and now flourishes in the shade of skyscrapers.

Cassidy knew there were others like them - underground vampire networks - but they did not seek them out. The New Orleans scene left a bad taste in his mouth and he only expected more of the same. Whispers traveled fast, however, about the five-foot-three minx who could take twelve bullets to the chest, laugh in your face, then bite out your tongue. She had gaggles of outcast kids trying to worm into her good graces, guessing what she was. However, unlike Cassidy's old chum "Eccarius," she set them all straight.

"Name's Tulip. No "queen" or "mistress" or "countess" in front of it neither, got that?" she spat. The no-nonsense grit in her voice seemed to surprise them there on the east coast. She was eventually met with a slow ripple of "yes... ma'am...?" spreading throughout the crowds.

  
She'd heard rumors of twin sisters in New Zealand who'd been turned when they were twelve years old and now spent their eternity subsisting on the blood of pedophiles they deliberately lured into the darkness. Seemed like quite a rewarding line of work, she thought, but for now she'd get enough vigilante fulfillment from disemboweling the men drugging girls' drinks in clubs. Contrary to popular belief, you didn't always have to go for the jugular. Blood was blood. Get it out any way you can. Tulip was a very creative woman.

Though it never crossed her mind back when he was still around, sometimes now she thought about what would have happened if she had bitten Jesse. If she perpetuated this toxic possessive domino effect to make him stay with her. What kind of fucked up vampire sitcom would that have made of the three of them? Not one she wanted to tune in to. She would never do that to anyone. She would never sink so low. She wondered if that would hold true eighty years from now, or if we would all eventually turn into Cassidy if we got lonely enough, hurt enough, desperate enough.

It's daylight in New York and he's carrying a jumbo black umbrella over both of their heads, ducking down closer to her height. Whoever said elbow-length gloves and capes were evening wear did not take into account how good they could be for sun coverage, Tulip's decided. She pushes her cat-eye sunglasses up the bridge of her nose as they approach their contact.

"The fuck is this, Penguin and Fish Mooney?" he quips. Cassidy grumbles and makes a mental note to explain the reference to her later.

"Uh huh. Nice to see you too, Jerry."

The sale of the 40 kilos of cocaine stuffed in the expansive bladders of frozen fish at their Hunts Point warehouse should keep them comfortable for another year or two - they take 70% of all their dealers' profits or else make a meal of them. In a pinch they'll scam casino patrons, with Cassidy easing into his role as an experienced and charismatically distracting card dealer while Tulip plays the ditzy southern belle tourist with money to burn.

* * *

The first time they hooked up post-bite, she felt conflicted after. She begrudgingly needed the anchor of another's touch to keep from going insane, but it had felt too much like the old days. Like she was giving him something when she should be taking, taking, taking. Sure, his default setting was now one of complete guilt and shame and subservience with his former mirth glinting somewhere at the bottom of this poisoned well, but she wanted to ensure he felt he had no small victories in her company whatsoever. She refused to let any part of this life taste like defeat ever again.

So she goes through a phase - entire years, really - of being on top, of choking him until he turns colors, of biting chunks out of his neck when she comes despite hating the sour taste of his blood. She's seen him with the pastel pink of his brain and intestines exposed before; she wonders how long it would take his body to recover if she ripped his heart out of his chest and ate it in front of him. She wants him to know what it felt like, she wants to hear him hiss and shriek, she wants him left to crawl into the nearest alley in search of cats to heal himself while she takes bubble baths and smokes all his weed.

"Hungry dogs are never loyal," she tells herself.

Eventually, however, she has to realize he's the only friend she can afford to have in this world.

They're unofficially monogamous. He has stared into the flaming sun of her soul for so long that he is blind to anyone else's. She's built so many walls around her heart, it would be impossible for anyone to ever get through. Yet every time she adds a new layer of impenetrable brick and turns around, there's Cassidy, already stuck with her on the interior and grinning.

As they tentatively grow closer over the years, she is nothing if not unpredictable. One night he could make her laugh until she was in tears, polish off three bottles of red wine and have a two-person dance party in one of their lofts. The next she'd keep him on his knees beneath her skirts for hours for all to see in the back booth of a night club she co-owned, pretending to be more interested in blowing smoke rings than in what his mouth was doing. He doesn't care. Every moment that he breathes the same air as her is a blessing he does not deserve.

The decades continue to pass like months. They spend very little time apart, but when they do, Cassidy hides from the sunshine inside movie theaters and treats himself to triple-features. They don't talk about Jesse unless they're completely shitfaced - in which case they both alternate between missing him and making fun of him. Tulip wonders what he would think of her now. She knows her father would be proud though.

Cassidy always rushes to light her cigarettes. He also habitually loses his lighters and has to use his hand. His cooking skills had plateaued at eggs and toast, but now he's learned to make M&M pancakes.

Tulip lives in jewel-toned clothes, leather and lace. Pleats and draping. Something gathered at the waist but easy to move in. A dark lip. Statement necklaces, thin body chains, or fabric neck ruffs. Velvet. Blood red. Armani, Valentino, La Perla underneath. Cassidy seems to stick to brown, heather gray, and olive. A peeling leather jacket he's had for decades. His poker face is shit, so she prefers he wear his shades at night if they're having a business meeting with anyone. She buys him some essentials like coats and gloves (which they wear often to keep their fingerprints off things, even though they could burn or chew off their fingertips if they were ever in custody - "Pull a Spacey," Cassidy says) and has convinced him to switch to winklepicker boots instead of the docs he'd worn out the soles of.

* * *

Tulip's knocking back drinks with Cassidy in Northside Pittsburgh, cross-lit by blue and red lights in one of her smallest clubs. The music is loud but the night is calm, the room full of regulars. The alcohol gives her some imitation of warmth in the core of her stomach, and she's almost placid enough to let her fingers walk up Cassidy's arm and around his shoulders. Suddenly a man with a familiar scent pushes open the door and makes a beeline for their table. It's one of their newer contacts in this city, someone they've only dealt with for a few months and not on the best terms neither. Tulip's posture stiffens. She talks business on neutral ground, not on her own terf where the people she employs could get hurt. Cassidy frowns and chews his lower lip, eyes locked on the man.

"Heard it came in last week. Where the fuck is my cut?" he shouts over the music, so close his belt buckle nearly touches the edge of their table. He was a small-time dealer who had paid upfront for his share of the next load of drugs they smuggled in. Due to him skimming a bit too much off the top of their _last_ transaction, they'd decided to silently cut him out of the deal and call it even. Figured he would take the hint without stirring up further shit.

"Someone please feed this boy his lines," Tulip calls out to no one in particular, rolling her eyes and leaning back on the plush pink pleather of the booth. "Because that's the question _I_ ask _you_. Or would've, if I wasn't already through with you, Travis." She hisses his name and quirks her lip up in disgust.

"Through with me?" Travis scoffs. "Alright then, give me back my money and you won't see me again, doll." Cassidy's eye twitches beneath his shades at the last word. Tulip folds her hands on the table and looks up at the ceiling, sarcastically pensive.

"Mm, yeah, last time you sold out of your - _our_ \- inventory and paid up, math didn't work out so good. 'bout fifteen k short if I recall. That don't fly."

Having too much hubris, too little patience for this brand of negotiation and too little fear of Tulip's reputation, the man wastes no time. He whistles. Shapes move in the dark, people scream, and suddenly Tulip sees he's had a man stationed by the bar now holding one of her bartenders in a headlock, a man blocking the exit, and a man by the entrance who's just shot the only bouncer in the head with a silenced SIG Sauer Mosquito. Well, fuck.

Tulip keeps calm on the outside, though every atom in her blood is vibrating like a glass of wine left on a subwoofer. Cassidy's fists are at his sides and his head is lowered but he waits for her signal. Travis' hand is at his hip, pushing back his coat and reaching for a gun but stopping to give Tulip time to resign gracefully. He likes to think himself a fair man. She looks him in the eye and runs her tongue over her front teeth.

"Typically I'll leave one of the boys alive," she draws out the last word in her accent, leaning further over her folded hands on the table, "with enough working parts to at least write down what he saw." Travis cocks his head slightly to the side and frowns, his eyes darting to Cassidy for a moment. "But this... This here is my house and you've been an awfully impolite guest. Think I'll leave this one up to the bystanders to spread the word."

Still holding his gaze, she drums her nails twice on the table - _ba-dump_ \- and in a second Cassidy's broken the man's wrist with one hand before vaulting over the bar and biting into the other piece of scum who'd been fumbling to press a gun to the bartender's head. The gun fires, the stray bullet hits one of the bottles on the wall and creates a domino effect, pushing a dozen of the others to shatter on the floor around their heads. Travis is trying to use his left hand to get his gun out of his holster, but Tulip slits his throat almost nonchalantly with a rainbow titanium pocket knife on the way to take down the man blocking the exit. He's tall, and he manages to get his own knife in her several times as she scales him like a tree to get to his neck, but once she does it's over quickly. Timber. She's drinking as fast as she's bleeding and she can't help but arch her spine up as she huddles over his twitching body. When she's sucked him dry, she looks across the emptied dance floor and sees Cassidy's face fully buried in the chest cavity of the man who shot the bouncer. Tilting her head up to the ceiling, she gives an open-mouthed smile. Quick and easy. Four down, none to go, no patrons dead on the floor. The music has never stopped and she can feel the bass in every one of her vertebrae now.

Even over the roar of the song she can hear the wet squelch of Cassidy coming up for air and their eyes meet.

This is when they're closest, after a fight-turned-feast, when they don't know if the slick crimson on their bodies is their own or their victims'. When their silent pride in each other fills the room and fills their hearts, with their ears ringing, their nostrils flared, and their pupils blown wide to take in all the glory. Everything is vibrating, everything has an outlining aura made of rainbow static, like watching a 3D movie but forgetting to put on the glasses. She loves it.

All his life, bar fights are the only times he's actually felt useful. Adrenaline courses through him. The look in her eyes - sated by blood but ravenous for something else - drives him mad. He crawls to her fast on hands and knees. She stands, drags him into the bathroom. The half dozen girls who had been hiding there after the gunshots pour out past them screaming loud enough to burst eardrums. She forgets her own strength and pushes him against the wall so hard the back of his skull cracks. They're biting each other's split lips to bring forth more blood. He breaks the long doubled string of pearls around her neck and she doesn't care. Fumbling, he tries to open a stall door with one hand but she grabs him by the shirt collar and pulls them down to the floor by the sinks, slipping in their own blood on the tile. He accidentally thumbs her knife wounds trying to get a grip on her until she shoves his hands down to her ass instead. Thanks to the man who killed the bouncer, Cassidy's nose is broken - for probably the thirtieth time in his life, from the looks of it - and flavors their rabid kisses with a continuous stream of blood.

He can't tell if alcohol got in his cuts from all those broken bottles or if her very touch is setting his skin on fire. When she bends him over a sink, pulls his hair back and reaches around to stroke him, they're happy that thing about not having reflections is just a myth because they're truly a sight to behold. Once she decides he's been sufficiently teased, they're back on the floor and he's pushing back her curls, previously plastered to her forehead with blood, as he kisses her. Biting his shoulder does little to muffle her cries when he slides in.

The club has cleared out and to the wide-eyed trembling bartender now sweeping up the broken glass by herself and trying to pile the bodies in one corner to be dealt with later, it sounds like a spirited dogfight is taking place in the ladies' room. She better get a raise for this.

Tulip and Cassidy are still out of breath when they leave through the back door. The cold autumn air chills them through the blood-soaked clothes they've put back on. For a second they forget they're not werewolves and feel like howling at the fucking moon, lovely porcelain dame she is.

* * *

 All his dreams of her are set in the daytime - the bounce of natural light pieced together from films he watches or from what little memory he has left. In his dreams, there is no god to forget them. There is no heaven or hell blocked off to their kind by velvet rope. There is only warm grass against their backs as he points out lewdly-shaped clouds and hears her laugh echo so loud it wakes him up.

* * *

 It is not hard to find things to love. How every time he gives a genuine burst of laughter, his nose crinkles and his eyebrows go down instead of up. How being turned so young means he never had a chance to grow any meat on his bones, forever a lanky teen at the peak of his growth spurt, even though the century of substance abuse may've done a number on his face and organs. How he sings "Raglan Road" quietly to lull himself to sleep when he thinks she can't hear.

If captor and hostage swap places somewhere along the line, do you still get to call it Stockholm Syndrome?

He rests his head on her chest tonight and hears no heartbeat. She might never say "'til the end of the world" to him, but that's only because she doesn't desperately need to hear him say it back.

She knows.


End file.
